COLUMBUS — If the gods hadn’t decided to administer such cruel and unusual punishment in those two games against Toronto, the Edmonton Oilers would be riding high right now.

They’d be 7-2 in their last nine games, their hottest stretch of the season, and sitting three points out of a playoff spot with 52 games to go.

They’d be on the roll they’ve been talking about all year.

Playoffs, here they come!

Except of course, they are only 5-4 in the last nine, seven points back, thanks to The Curse of the Leafs: A pair of truly dumbfounding losses that could haunt the Oilers into the summer.

It began Nov. 30 with Edmonton playing the lights out over the final 50 minutes at home, putting up 45 shots on net to storm back from 2-0, 3-1 and 4-3 deficits, only to watch Kris Russell cap his best game of the season by firing one into his own net with 1:05 left to give the Toronto the win.

And 10 days later, the Oilers played one of their best and most complete games of the season, outshooting Toronto, 41-23 and out-chancing them 24-10, only to lose 1-0 on a goaltending performance that probably cost Curtis McElhinney his soul.

Those are three, and maybe four points that should have been theirs.

Of course, coulda, woulda and shoulda are the last things anyone wants to hear right now, including the Oilers. But the reality of the situation is they’ve been playing pretty well lately for a 28th place team on the brink of disaster.

True, but there is also a bit of light and hope in the way they’ve been going lately. They trounced Montreal 6-2 in Montreal and should have trounced Toronto by almost that much in Toronto. And before that, they were 4-2, counting the Toronto loss.

“We dominated five-on-five,” Milan Lucic said of Sunday’s seemingly unfair result in the Air Canada Centre. “But it was hitting posts and out, kept hitting the goalie, it was just the story of how everything has been going this season.

“You try not to get frustrated, you stick with it and trust the process. You know you deserve better from an effort like that, but if you continue bringing efforts like that you’ll get the results you want.”

That’s what they’re counting on. That is, frankly, all they’ve got to hold onto right now. Because while three points back would have afforded them a little breathing room, seven doesn’t.

“We can’t hang our heads,” said Patrick Maroon. “The last two games we’ve done some really good things. The guys in this room believe. We’re not out of this thing yet. We’re far from out of it. We just have to win December. If we win December and go into Christmas .500 this (12-16-2) team is going to have some success going forward.”

If they hadn’t blown October and November, they could shrug off the Leafs loss to one (or two) of those freak things that happen in hockey and carry on knowing they’re playing pretty well.

But they can’t. What happened in the first 21 games of the season magnifies every defeat.

“You have one or two of those a year, the unfortunate thing is we’re not in a situation where we can give up those points,” said head coach Todd McLellan. “But I can’t complain about the effort of our group. We played hard, we were very competitive. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the result but it was a solid, solid effort on our behalf. If we continue to play like we did we’ll get our share of wins.”

That’s the message he’s trying to get across now: Focus on what they’re seeing from themselves on the ice rather than where they see themselves in the standings.

It’s less troubling that way.

“We have to look at it that way,” said McLellan. “We haven’t talked a lot about the standings. I’m not posting the lineup and doing math and educating our group on how many games we need to win and who we have to beat. We need our team to improve and if we continue to improve we’ll look at the standings as we evolve.”

Because if they sag, even a little bit, they won’t have to look at the standings again until next season.

“I don’t think we’re completely out of runway but at some point you have to put together a pretty good win streak to get yourself back in the mix,” said Lucic. “We have a lot of divisional games left and if we take care of that we can get ourselves back in the picture.

“But also we know that it has to start sooner than later because if .500 hockey continues, there will be no chance we get ourselves back in the playoff race.”

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